


Some Assembly Required

by afriendtosell



Category: RWBY
Genre: Androids, F/F, Gen, Mechanical Rose, Nuts and Dolts - Freeform, Romance, Teen Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-13
Updated: 2015-06-13
Packaged: 2018-04-03 23:25:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4118548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afriendtosell/pseuds/afriendtosell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It starts after the Vytal Festival ends, same as when they first met—Penny throwing Ruby for a massive loop, easy to her as breathing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Some Assembly Required

**Author's Note:**

> The original idea ran somewhere along the lines of: "Penny needs general maintenance, and goes to Ruby to get it one day. Unfortunately, both find out Penny is very, very sensitive during."
> 
> Timeline-wise, this occurs after S2.
> 
> Enjoy.

◈◈◈

It starts after the Vytal Festival ends, same as when they first met—Penny throwing Ruby for a massive loop, easy to her as breathing.

“Friend-Ruby!” she calls out, hurrying after the other huntress as she walks down the hallway. “Wait! Please, wait just a moment! Please! Ruby Rose!”

Ruby turns around just in time to get a face-full of pastel green and dull khaki. Penny makes an  _oomph_  sound when they collide, though Ruby’s pretty sure it takes more air out of her, the two of them crumpling into a wild heap, Penny falling on top of Ruby in a pile of limbs. Ouch—for a girl almost the same size as her, Penny’s kinda heavy.

Oh, right.  _Android_.

“Uh—hey, Penny…?” she says, wincing at the weight crushing her sternum. It was getting a little hard to breathe. “H-how’s it…going?”

The other girl nearly leaps to the ceiling, her arms flailing, sputtering. “Oh, no! Oh dear, oh dear, oh—Ruby, I am so sorry!” she cries, arms a cotton blur as they wave up and down at her sides. “I never meant—I was just attempting to catch you, and you are so fast for someone so tiny—my calculations did not factor in the bleed effect your semblance has even when not in use—and I did not think you heard me even though I am sure I was being fairly loud, so I thought that the only way I would get your attention would be attempting face-to-face contact but then you turned around just as I sped up and—”

“Woah, woah!” Ruby laughs, holding up her hands while still laying on the ground. “It’s okay, Penny—I’m alright, see?” she stands up and dusts off her skirts, wobbles only a tiny bit on her feet. “Lil’ dazed from having a hundred pounds of girl fall on me, though…not gonna lie. But we're cool!”

The face Penny makes is heart breaking, her trembling bottom lip and watery eyes just a  _bit_  too much for Ruby to handle before breakfast. “Penny, it’s okay! Really!” she explains, emphatic; grabs for Penny's hands in a quick blur. “It was an accident and no one got hurt-please-don’t-cry-I’m-terrible-at-this-and-haven’t-even-had-anything-to-eat-yet!”

“Truly?” Penny sniffles, hiccups just a little. “My carelessness did not inadvertently ruin your entire day?”

A lot of Penny is strange and new to Ruby. People in general aren't really her thing; they're too complex, they think too much and say too little. She prefers Yang's brand of loud because it's honest—and Penny is, too. Painfully so, sometimes. But she's also harder to read than Blake, ping-ponging from one emotion to the next without a moment's pause. “Penny, you’re my friend, okay?” she explains, looking her straight in the eye. “If I can survive Weiss almost blowing me up the first time we met, having you fall on top of me every once in awhile should be a piece of cake!”

“Oh, how glorious!” Penny near launches herself at Ruby, scooping her up in a tight hug, “I am so pleased to hear you say that! I thought you would be mad and then I would not be able to ask you for your help and that would force my having to track down Headmaster Ozpin for assistance, which even though he is a brilliant man—or so my files say—he always smells like dry tea leaves and that particular aroma tends to make my olfactory processor short-out if I am around it for too long—”

Ruby blanches into the crook of Penny’s neck. It’s too much hug; she’s willing, but her flesh is weak. Stupid, stupid flesh. “Penny…I can’t…breathe…excitement…overwhelming…”

“Oh! Ruby, I am so sorry!" Penny lets her go with a gasp, leaping back with both hands over her mouth. "But this is just sensational! You were my first choice out of everyone!”

“It's okay—wait, really?” she rubs the nape of her neck and looks at the ceiling, heat rising to her cheeks. She's never been a first anything. Penny nods and makes a small  _mhm_  noise when she looks at her, hands behind her back and a huge smile plastered on her face. "Hehe, guess I'll have to try extra hard, then!" she says, means. "I wouldn't want to disappoint my first and only fan!" a pause. "Who isn't Yang, I mean, hehe."

"Out _stand_ ing!" Penny shouts, slapping her knee. "I just knew I could count on you, friend!"

Her next hug is about as soul-crushing as the first, pops vertebra in her back before Penny drops her and spills apologies like water.

"Ah, it's okay, it's fine,"she says, knows she’ll feel it in the morning—heck, she’s feeling it  _now_ , hands braced on her knees as she tries to catch her breath. “You…said you needed help…with…something?”

Penny positively beams at her, green eyes crinkling at the edges.

◈◈◈

It starts with Penny’s acceptance to Beacon after Ozpin comes back. The tournament sees Ironwood step down after he and the Atlesian military fail to contain another incursion of Grimm. This time, the monsters hit during the finals, bursting out from beneath the arena smack in the middle of Pyrrha and Yang going head-to-head. The two are able to handle themselves— _no duh_ , Ruby laughs, thinking back—up until a new kind of Grimm, one older than the War, all claws and teeth and  _too fast for Ruby and even Professor Oobleck to follow_  hits the scene.

Penny makes a name for herself by taking it out in one shot.

Ruby isn’t sure quite what happens next, but once classes start again Ozpin makes a big howtodo speech—when doesn’t he—about how centuries of study only went so far, and as their enemy evolved so too did blah, blah, blah. Long-story short: Penny was awesome. And afterward several new students joined Beacons ranks courtesy of their freshly implemented transfer program.

After catching breakfast, the two huntresses make their way to the quad. It’s a breezy, unclouded day; Ruby closes her eyes once they exit the artificial air, taking a moment to let the sun wash over her. Nature always suited her more than creature comforts. She understood nature. The yard’s huge, a rectangle—naturally—of greenery that takes up half of Beacon’s east side. Tall elm trees flank the path leading from the dorms, the cobblestone trail opening to a field of plush, well-kept emerald grass. There’s people everywhere: students and visitors alike. And seeing that still throws Ruby off, sometimes.

Beacon is a stark contrast to where she came from.

“Watch it, Little Red Scrub!” she dodges a wayward frisbee, shakes an indignant fist at Cardin’s back as he and his stupid meathead jerk crew come barreling past. At least he stays a constant, strange as it sounds—not that that was the best thing ever. Jerk.

Penny watches them go with a look Ruby can’t quite place, lagging behind as they walk. She’s been oddly quiet since they left the main building. Pensive.

“Everything okay, P?” she asks, curious.

She doesn’t get an immediate answer. Or maybe Penny didn’t hear? In any case, Ruby keeps walking until she finds a spot out-of-the-way enough for them to work. They’ll need peace and quiet for this—and the less she sees of Cardin and his goons, the better. Taking Penny by the hand, she motions to a small cypress tree near one of the lakes surrounding Beacon. Penny nods and matches her pace, the two of them walking side-by-side.

“I simply never imagined Beacon would be so...large,” Penny eventually says, chewing her bottom lip. She looks everywhere but forward as they walk, green eyes darting left and right. “…How does no one get lost?”

Ruby lets out a nervous chuckle, rubs the space beneath her nose to stave off embarrassment. She remembers her first month wandering the halls always asking for directions. “Plenty people get lost, Penny. Believe me—I think the Headmaster does it on purpose.”

“Eh?” Penny tilts her head, eyebrows knitting in confusion. “Is that not counter-intuitive?" she asks, something approaching concern in her voice. "Would it not be simpler for Beacon to have a uniform design for ease of travel? Many buildings in Atlas share the same architecture for that reason alone. ”

Ruby shrugs, though she has her theories. “Duh, but then Ozpin wouldn’t be able to pop out like a rando creeper all the time,” she explains, only a  _little_  sarcastic. When all that gets from Penny is another quizzical look, she explains herself: “I think he just gets lost a lot, like…” she searches for the right words, trailing off as they pass a group of second-years doing yoga. Watching them makes her neck go stiff. “Like, okay. So most everyone thinks Ozpin’s this crazy mysterious dude, right? Just like this guy who’s always at the right place at the right time, like magic?”

“Yes, I remember hearing as much,” she says, a finger to her chin. “Though I disagree with your Jaune's assessment—it is a statistical impossibility for Headmaster Ozpin to be in two places at once.”

Ruby shrugs. “Yeah, that’s probably Oobleck’s job—waitaminute,” she stops, turns to give Penny an ‘ _Am I out of the loop, here_?  _How did I get out of the loop?_ ’ look. “When did you talk to and-or hang out with Jaune?”

“During the tournament," she states, matter-of-fact. "More specifically, during the exhibition matches held by the staff. I overheard him and Nora speaking with Weiss on the matter while sitting several rows in front of them.”

Ruby whistles, more-than-slightly impressed. “You’ve got some crazy-good memory there, P. I can’t even remember what I had for breakfast…” she closes her eyes, raised fist trembling at the memory. “And  _it was delicious_.”

“Two eggs sunny-side up, a whole apple, four pieces of toast, two glasses of milk, two-dozen grapes, a glass of orange juice, three pancakes…” Penny lists on and on. They reach the cypress tree as she finishes counting the rest of Ruby’s meal off of her fingers, having rotated twice. “…and two doughnuts with your mocha-latte.”

Ruby’s burp is as loud as it is unapologetic. “What can I say?” she shrugs, “I’m a growing girl with growing needs.”

“Three inches since I met you!” Penny says, nodding as she drops a fist into her open palm. Ruby opens her mouth, nonplussed; but then, pointer-finger raised, her tone suddenly as earnest as it was wise, Penny continues: “At this current rate—and taking out of account any unforeseen accidents you may have—with proper exercise and a healthy diet of calcium and protein, I predict you will grow at least another foot by your early-twenties!”

Pause. She’s thrown for a loop, again. “You…predict?”

“You will be as tall as your sister, Yang!” the other girl jumps with joy, and Ruby can swear she sees sparkles floating with her. “Isn’t that just swell? You will no longer be the subject of short jokes!”

That alone damn well nearly makes Ruby vibrate. She puts a hand on either of Penny’s shoulders—noting, distantly, how warm her bare psuedoskin is—and squeezes tight. Penny looks at her with a small amount of concern, unsure of what’s going on or about to happen. But she doesn’t move, not even when Ruby actually  _starts_  vibrating.

“—Penny!”

That almost gets the redhead to jump, though.

“You’re! So! Freaking! Cool!” she draws the other girl into a tight hug, lifting her up, spinning them around. “I thought the majority of your processing power would be devoted to combat functions, but lookit you!” she drops Penny to her feet, zips away to burn off her excess Semblance before reappearing at Penny’s left. “You can stockpile information and run predictive analysis based on data you pick up on the fly—that’s! Just! So…!”

When Ruby comes back from her second trip, Penny salutes her. “I was created to be more than just combat ready!”

"Yeah, but even then—" Ruby zips this way and that, can't help herself from admiring Penny at every angle. "You're the only Atlasbot that has an Aura, and you can talk—and not just talk, but you've got opinions and you can argue them and—" she skids to a halt in front of Penny, loose dirt and grass trailing in her wake. "But even then, there's gaps in what you know, like on purpose, so you  _learn_  stuff by watching it and Penny do you even know how amazing that is?!"

"Well—"

"I'll tell you how amazing!" Ruby interrupts, "It's like if Crescent Rose could talk, like...imagine if I made a wish one night and out of nowhere some magic godmother brought her to life in the morning!" she's forced to zip away again, her Semblance making every nerve itch for movement. When she comes back, Penny's already taken out a blanket and started laying it down. "Do you know how many Grimm we could beat up if our weapons could  _learn_? If they could just, like— _float_ next to us and help out?"

Penny's quits smoothing out the blanket, considers. "...I would need to collect the proper data."

" _Loads_ ," Ruby sighs from above, wistful. "And just think about your swords for a sec, P!" she adds, spreading her hands. "You'd have like, what—ten _more_ super cool friends?"

She expects to see the redhead with stars in her eyes. From the look on her face though, Penny disagrees.

“I am not sure it would be as simple as you think."

"Why not?" Ruby dismounts with a flip and lands in front of Penny. "They're built right in!" 

"Part of my education has also involved learning how to understand and interact with others. However,” she hesitates, features softening. Ruby kind of feels like she's stepped on Zwei's tail. “That has proven harder than anticipated at times.”

“Well, then they’re just dumb,” Ruby nods to herself, dusts off her skirt. “—not in general, I mean. People are great!” she pauses after, rethinks her thesis while rummaging through the backpack they've brought. “Maybe not Cardin, though. I guess?” he did help Jaune out during the festival, she thinks with a bob of her head. That had to count for something.

She holds up a finger, wagging it once. 

 _"Most_  people are great. Just don’t listen to the not-great ones,” she continues, pulling several tools from Penny’s pack and arranging them neat at one corner of the blanket. “And even the not-so-great people…I think they just don’t get it, you know?” she shrugs one shoulder, turning to smile up at Penny. “ _We_ get it, though. They just need a bit more time for the awesome to sink in.”

The following silence isn't something Ruby has much experience with. It isn’t sad or anything—but it also isn’t Penny. She takes the lull as a chance to sit down and shrug out of her boots, her cowl following suit. Great, amazing, absolutely necessary accessories for the huntress on the go as they are--no matter what Coco and her stupid gorgeous always fashionable face said--it’s still too hot for them. Plus, the grass feels good beneath her feet. And her calves. It's just about the biggest thing Vale has over Patch, to be honest. No poison ivy or weird fungi everywhere.

She'd say no Grimm, too. But, well.

Several minutes pass. When she can’t suffer the silence anymore, she clears her throat. "Um. Penny?"

Sunlight falls dappled through the wiry branches of the cypress. Penny—she doesn’t look at Ruby, not at first. Her eyes are unfocused, her head tilted toward the horizon. The way the light hits makes her gleam; in places where her pseudo-skin is thinnest, Ruby can almost imagine the complex patterns of wires and circuitry beneath. Sleek. Precise. Every inch of her lethal, Penny as much a master feat of engineering as Ruby’s very own Crescent Rose.

(It's a jarring thought, something she's angry for thinking, shame rising at the back of her throat.)

“Penny, you’re great and you deserve a million friends,” she blurts, immediately wants to take it back how she says it but can’t and won’t once she sees Penny’s smile. “…You know that, right?”

It's a nice smile, sort of maybe like Yang's: all teeth, earnest and warm. “I…am not quite sure I would be able to adequately divide my time, were that the case."

Ruby claps her hands together. “Heeeeeey, lucky you! Just checked my schedule, and guess what?” she grins lopsided, pats the space of unoccupied blanket next to her for Penny to sit down. “All I got’s today is free time, girlfriend!” she picks up a nearby screwdriver and twirls it between her fingers, “So, c’mon—let’s play doctor with your insides!”

She manages to look dubious without moving her face. “Ruby, are you quite aware of the differences between an android and a cyborg?”

“The-time-for-questions-has-passed!” she shouts back, laughing faux-maniacal. “We science now!”

◈◈◈

She expects something from a textbook. Or maybe a gross horror vid. A section of Penny’s forearm splitting to reveal a computer screen, or the back of her head sliding open to expose a biomechanical brain—you know: something  _weird_. Because weird she can handle. She’s spent years learning how to deal with  _weird_. Weird is familiar.

“Um, Ruby…is something the matter?”

Penny sitting down in front of her, her back to Ruby’s chest, slowly reaching one hand back to start and loosen the clasp of her overalls is  _not what she expects_.

“Ruby, why are you covering your face?” the redhead shoots over her shoulder, hand hovering.

“You, ahgeez—” Ruby's hands are a cage in front of her eyes. “D-don’t take this the wrong way, because I’m totally still down to help! Totally, to-ta-ly,” she explains, voice a few notes higher than she’d like. “But if you were gonna get naked I think that should’ve come up in conversation at some point, just for future reference—even just a little head’s up!”

Penny gives her a blank stare. Then, after whatever arcane processes ran her brain finally gets it: “—Oh.  _Oh_!” it’s the first time Ruby sees a robot blush. “I—uh—um—uh, uh please do not think that I used my needing a partner for a manual diagnostic as a pretense to do something untoward or put you in an uncomfortable position please I just require someone to help me because my admin panel is located in a hatch at the base of my neck and it is quite difficult to access by myself!”

“ _OhthankgodandYang_ ,” she puts her hands down and leans back on their heels. If her sigh of relief were any bigger, she’d deflate. “You really had me worried for a second.”

Penny averts her eyes, her cheeks go flush. “I am so _, so_  sorry, Ruby!”

"It's not a huge deal," she shakes her head, grins despite herself. “Just warn me next time, P!”

Penny nods and goes back to task, one hand pulling her orange curls back while the other undoes the clasp at her back. Once loose, she shrugs the straps of her overall and crosses her arms, gently pulls her blouse down by its sleeves. Freckles dust her shoulders, trailing further down, look like they almost cover Penny's entire back but disappear past the hem of her blouse. Ruby's a little jealous;  she's always wanted freckles after noticing Yang won that particular lottery.

“My admin panel should be just there,” Penny explains, turning her head to look back as best she can. Ruby nods, follows the general direction of her eyes. “You will have to undo the cover manually. After doing so, you will have to input a code before gaining full access to my systems.”

She nods again, spins her screwdriver on the flat of her hand without taking her eyes off Penny’s back. Though her skin is smooth—she’s a little jealous of how smooth, like dang that’s unfair—the panel sticks out a bit, the skin above a slight rectangular depression between Penny's shoulders. She taps it with her screwdriver, asks: “This the bad dude I’m looking for?”

Penny bounces in place a little. “T-that's exactly it,” she answers, and even Ruby can notice the shiver in her voice. "T-there should be six screws."

“Uh, you alright there?” she asks, “I can run for another blanket, if you’re cold. No big.”

It takes Penny a second to answer. “The skin there is a little...sensitive," she stops, closing her eyes. "Please be careful.”

“Really, you’re programmed to feel that?” she goes to tap the plate again, but thinks better than to mess. Friends didn't experiment on friends. "Cool beans."

“I was designed to be as human as possible," Penny explains, bounces again once Ruby starts unscrewing. "P-part of that lays in correctly mimicking human nervous-system responses—painful, automatic, neutral, or otherwise…” she shifts in place, pulling her legs underneath her to one side. Her shoulders droop, tense; before Ruby can say anything, her head and back go ramrod straight. “Please do not tickle me, Ruby Rose! I dislike it very much!”

"Not doing it on purpose, Penny..." she demurs, but still can't help but grin. "Is it really that bad, though?"

Penny huffs and throws a rather professional pout over her shoulder, "You would not enjoy my company if I were angry, Ruby."

"Hey, don't be mean!" she whines, tapping Penny's back on purpose this time. "I'm just gonna do weird stuff inside you, no big deal."

"Ruby!"

She giggles to herself, feigning innocence. "Yang would proooobably say I should buy you dinner first though, hehe.” 

Penny blinks, annoyance draining from her face by inches. “My internal power supply receives ambient energy directly from Dust in the atmosphere—" she explains, powering through one last twist of the screwdriver. "W-why would I need to eat before a diagnostic?”

Ruby's laugh isn’t so quiet this time. She shakes her head, cursing Yang for being the perennial bad influence in the family. “Never mind, it's a bad joke. Let's just get this thing off you..." she trails off when it hits her, "How...ever...it comes off?"

"Press down between my shoulders," Penny instructs, head facing front. "The panel is pressurized and should come free of its own volition." 

She does as asked—thinking  _soft_ once her fingers touch—and presses down on bare skin until she hears a soft click. True to form, the square comes free with a mechanical _psst_. Ruby pulls it out and sets it aside, amazed in a rather distant way she isn't grossed out about the whole ordeal. "K, got the cover off without anyone blowing up," she reports, "So, firstly: score one for Ruby Rose, master of all things complex and mechanical," she gives a little bow while Penny claps. "Be they bio or not."

“Now, secondly," she continues, leaning in and pitching her voice to try and mimic a gangster. "What’s the password, see?”

“One-eight-one-three—though, is everything alright?” the concern in Penny's voice tells Ruby her impression isn’t as timeless as she thinks. “If you cannot see the panel, I can move!”

She huffs, puffing her cheeks. “P, remind me to lend you a copy of the  _Maltese Nevermore_ , okay? You have not  _lived_ ,” she says, already planning the movie night and pajama party sleepover extravaganza in the back of her mind. They'd need another bunk bed. “Alright, so…the code’s one…eight…one—waitasec,” her eyebrows go up almost of their own volition. “The year Atlas was founded?”

Penny makes an  _mhm_ sound as she nods. “It was General Ironwood’s suggestion,” she explains, “Though military contractors sell Atlesian robotics to many other kingdoms, he believes every android created by my father should have a piece of Atlas within it—” her voice cuts out, static crackling in the back of her throat before it comes back a few octaves lower, more masculine. “ _So as to never forget the kingdom in which they serve_. Other models have longer codes, however; so don’t get any funny ideas, missy! ”

The fact Penny isn’t bothered by that bothers  _Ruby_  for reasons she can’t articulate. She opts to keep the thought to herself; Penny needs her head in the game. “I guess that makes sense,” she lies, immediately feels bad about it. “…You’re gonna run me through this, yeah?”

“Of course!” Penny’s two-thousand-gigawatt smile is infectious, banishes the pit growing in Ruby’s stomach. “I will start the diagnostic program shortly. You will need to connect your scroll to my motherboard to follow my progress—here, let me,” she reaches back, fumbling a bit before finding the opening to her admin board. A moment later, she pulls out a thin cable from her spine and motions for Ruby to grab it. “As I check which systems require maintenance digitally, I will ask you to correlate my internal data with the back-up I have exported to your scroll,” her voice is even, a far cry from her usual bubbly self. “Do you understand?”

“Way to sound mega professional P, hehe,” she takes the offered cable, smiles at the light blush that comes to Penny’s face. “It’s cool, no sweat. I’m ready whenever you are.”

Penny’s answer is a gentle hum of assent. She turns her head front, legs stretching out to either side. Leaning forward, she rests her elbows on her knees and cradles her chin on her hands, exposing the circuitry within her back to the sunlight. It fairly glitters; over a dozen colors shine up at her, and Ruby briefly wonders how it must feel to be so pretty on the inside.

She takes a breath— _get your head in the game, Rose_ —and fishes her scroll out of her skirt pocket, connecting it to the cable Penny pulled out. It boots up easy enough, but the eventual start-up panel she gets isn’t one familiar to her. Or in a language she understands.

“Fat-uh…too…chi-nee?” she reads, squinting down at her scroll in confusion before the words disappear, replaced by lines of collating data.

Penny’s giggle catches her off-guard. “ _Fata Turchini_ —it means turquoise fairy,” she explains, throwing Ruby a casual smile over her shoulder. “My operating system.”

 _Ah_ , Ruby mouths.  _Duh_. She ignores the heat at the tips of her ears and imagines Penny is giggling at some joke she remembers, not her terrible accent. “—Why fairy?”

“A moment, please! Now beginning automated systems diagnostics,” Her voice sounds more robotic, less warm. She rolls her shoulders as the thin keypad above her admin panel shifts up and out of sight. " _Technician: please stand by for diagnostic of system-dot-exe_."

They go slow once everything starts in earnest. It’s not an easy process; even if Penny’s not that much different from other weap— _mechanical things_  Ruby’s worked on, she’s a league or three above more complex. And Ruby isn’t. Every hunter worth their weight in Grimm deal with numbers and code during general upkeep of their tools; but she’s always preferred to work with her hands, to chance electrical shocks and broken fingers. Penny’s systems are dense, a tapestry of the most advanced robotics and military-grade hardware available—she’s probably broken at least a couple dozen laws by helping her—but, like Yang always says: what’re a few illegal acts between friends?

Penny takes the lead from the onset, working through digital checklist after checklist all by herself. Occasionally, she asks Ruby for input—did this seem right to her, could she read back what her screen said again, did their numbers match down to the digit? She’s meticulous, double and triple checking every system and sub-routine while Ruby struggles to keep pace.

“—Oh, dear.” And doesn’t  _that_  make Ruby's heart skip a beat. “I, um…it seems—Ruby my friend whom I appreciate so much and would not be able to replace at this late stage—that we have found our first error!" for some reason, admitting that sees Penny pump her fist. " _Mag_ nificent!”

Ruby remembers how to breathe after that. “Um. Yay…?”

“Yes, quite!” the other girl continues, laughter plain in her voice. “It seems that one of my regulatory systems has malfunctioned, most likely due to an injury sustained during the tournament. And it cannot be fixed by a simple debug program!”

“You sound  _really_  excited about this.” Ruby is not.

“I have never sustained damage of this kind before!” she explains, pushing herself up to a sitting position. When she looks back at Ruby, the sunlight makes her eyes bright, almost a neon green. “It will be a simple enough repair, but you will have to access the circuit directly. We cannot continue with the diagnostic until you finish!”

She ignores the small part of her that gets excited, but can't quite keep it out of her voice. "S-seriously...?"

Penny agrees a bit too fast for someone ostensibly suffering internal bleeding. It takes a while, but once they zero in on the patch of damaged circuit Ruby understands just why Penny needed the help. She gives a low whistle.

“Gotcha—no pressure, right?” she reaches into her pocket and pulls out a hair tie and several hairpins, sweeping back her bangs before pinning them in place. How Yang manages to do  _anything_  with so much hair is lost on her; she ties the rest of her hair back into a tight ponytail, testing it by shaking her head. When it doesn’t fall apart—thank you for the tips, Weiss—she sets her scroll down and makes for Penny’s backpack, rummaging through for a moist sponge and a short coil of solder.

“So er, what exactly got damaged?” she asks offhand, flicking the iron on before placing it on the sponge. “It’s not, like, some kind of scary ‘you have twenty-eight minutes to live if this isn’t fixed right now,’ dealio, right?”

Penny giggles. “Nothing so important, no—but if left unchecked, I may begin to lose balance at random intervals! And I would very much appreciate not!”

Once the iron is hot enough, Ruby starts using the sponge to scrape its tip clean of any old solder. "See—you say that and, on the one hand? Hiiiiiilarious," she tests the iron by melting a bit of solder with it, cleans it again afterward. "Something like that happened to Yang when we were kids."

"Truly? Was your sister also thrown through a wall at high speeds?" Penny contorts herself so the majority of her torso is facing Ruby, sounding way more excitable than she should. "We could compare notes!"

"Nah, nothing that bad. Though," Ruby answers, laughing under her breath before blowing off the last bit of old solder from the iron. "I guess I shouldn't be telling the story? She hates it when I share her baby stuff."

"—Oh," Penny frowns. "I suppose it  _is_ rather personal."

Ruby roll her eyes. “Nah, I mean...not really?" hot soldering iron in hand, she goes from sitting crossed-legged to balancing on her knees. “Kind just makes her look like a dweeb, to be honest. Eh, tell you what—” she leans in to get a better look at Penny's circuit board. "You tell me about your dad, and I'll tell you about Yang. Deal?

“Oh, well…!” she fidgets in place, excitement palpable. “How does one condense so much in so few words?"

She thinks back to Penny's operating system. "Lemme guess—he's a big fan of fairy-tales?"

"My word, yes! I don't ever think I have ever seen father without a book in his hands," she makes it sound like she's never thought about it. "He used to read to me constantly when we traveled together. And when I was accepted to Beacon, he sent me all my favorites!"

"He sounds like a great guy, P. Kinda sad I never got to meet him," she says, and means. "Hold still for a sec?"

Penny nods, bracing her hands against her thighs. "He believes every kingdom must work together to find the source of the Grimm. I was originally designed to help achieve that noble goal, but instead of training with the Knights series Iiiiiiiii...!"

Her entire body goes ramrod straight, Ruby's semblance the only thing that saves them from a rather horrific accident. “Penny-oh-my-gosh-oh-my-gosh-I’m-sorry-I'm-what-did-I-do-did-I-hurt-you?!”

"N-not to worry, Ruby! I am f-fine!" a waving hand deters her freak-out, though the pitch of her voice is a little high. Breathless, too. "That was simply, um. R-rather unexpected!"

A wave of relief floods through Ruby. It lasts .02 of a second when she realizes what happened. "I didn't mean--I mean, I didn't think it--" what feels like an electric current is running from her heart to her head, both pounding wild. She takes a deep, steadying breath; the joys of having a speed-based semblance means her panic attacks come and go rather quick. "Geez, I'm really sorry, Penny! I needed to scrape away some of the damaged circuit before I could start soldering a new one," she explains, "Didn't think anything  _bad_ would happen."

"Bad?" Penny shoots her a confused glance. "Ruby, that was quite the opposite!"

She blinks. Blinks some more at _how_ Penny says it.

"I've never been touched like that!"

Blinks _a lot_ more, after. 

"Is something the matter?" Penny asks, "You are being awfully quiet all of a sudden."

Three seconds of silence. She fights the urge to slap herself, knows it would only make her face more red.

"Ruby?"

"—Yang punctured her eardrum when we were little," she says, apropos of nothing. "She snuck into my uncle's workshop one night and started playing around with his prototypes, and you know Yang," Ruby balances back on her knees to start working again, focusing more on telling her story than the immediate shiver that goes up Penny's spine. "She can't ever  _not_ do things the easy way, so of course she finds the biggest thing in the shop to mess with. Of _course_."

Penny brushes her hair to one side, holding it against her neck while settling back into position. It snakes wild through her fingers, and Ruby wonders for a moment how it'd feel between her fingers. "The whole neighborhood wakes up when the thing goes off, but Yang's super freaking loud when she cries," she closes an eye to get a better sense of where the circuit should go after a bend. Penny squirms. "Just hold tight, P—and yeah, it sucked for her, but she kinda brought it on herself too, y'know?"

"People _oh_ ften do things out of curiosity," Penny explains, a slight hitch in her voice. "Judging from how your sister is now, I guess things got worse?"

"She wouldn’t listen to the doctors, yeah." the jerk to attention following her next bit of solder is more subdued this time, a gentle arch of the back. "They told her to stay in bed, but she wouldn't have it, so just—just imagine Yang, but small and with a smaller body-to-hair ratio cuz it’s always been super long," she pictures it and smiles, Yang a little nine-year-old ball of fluff that hadn't yet been visited by the puberty fairies: Brick and House. "And she's just running around, still getting into trouble..."

Penny, for what it's worth, seems to listen to every word. Even when her shoulders tense and shake, she does her best to keep an eye on Ruby. "You t-two still lived on Patch at the time, y-yes?"

“Hehe; she’d get so bored at home, though!" Ruby explains, "There's not a lot to do on the island; I mean, not unless you're a hunter-in-training? Or a fisherman," she adds, watching the splay of muscles in Penny's back shift as she blows a bit of spent solder off the tip of the iron. "Ooooor any other kind of trade-person, I guess? We're kind of old-school like that. Yang likes wood carving."

"Oh, oh! So does my father!"

"Neato," she says, and means. "Then we'll have something to talk about," a pause as she concentrates on finishing another inch of circuit. "Y'know, if I ever meet him."

Penny makes a small, happy noise somewhere between assent and...nothing else, Ruby thinks. Absolutely nothing else. "S-so. Yang would get so bored cooped up in her room that she'd always try to sneak out to come play with us—but dad,  _geez_ ,” she shakes her head, can’t fight the smirk that comes out from her grimace. “Mom might’ve been really fast, like _super_ fast;but it was like he had a sixth sense, P. Yang could barely make it out the front door, sometimes!”

“Perhaps he could sense her aura?” Penny offers, raising a finger. "It is not uncommon in family members, especially when they are close."

“Maybe!" Ruby's never thought of it like that. "He knew a lot about that kind of stuff, same as uncle Qrow and mom. Anyway, it was just hilarious seeing, like, this fifty-pound ball of blonde curls run around town with a bunch of adults after her," she laughs, "Even if she fell down, she’d just get right back up and keep running—it lasted  _days_.”

Penny laughs along with her, holding a hand to her mouth as she shook her head. “How outrageous!” she says, pauses to fight another small spasm. "Y-your sister sounds all kinds of amazing, Ruby. I can't wait to know her better!"

“Yeah, she is. Sometimes,” a beat passes before Ruby realizes what she’s said. “Doooon’t tell her I told you any of that, though. Like...don't even mention it," she warns, the hair on the back of her neck standing from muscle-memory. "Like I said: she gets _really_ embarrassed about baby stories.”

Penny salutes her again. “You can count on me, Ruby Rose!”

"You're good peoples Penny, hehe," she smiles, tucking a few loose strands of hair behind her ear. "Let's finish this up and get lunch, okay?"

The rest of the circuit doesn't take long to fill. For the most part, Penny keeps still enough for Ruby to do her thing. It's almost automatic after a certain point; she'll apply a little bit more solder, give Penny a chance to breathe and ride out...whatever it was that made her squirm, then repeat. Easy. Straightforward.

And then, it's not.

Ruby winces at seeing the last bit of circuit. The path takes a hard right, forms a soft depression in the board itself before continuing unmarred. It's not dented enough to require replacing, but she'll have to pull a bit of fancy soldering to patch everything up. And that meant working quick and precise, with little room for pause.

She bites her bottom lip, contemplates her next move and goes quiet again. The collar around Penny's neck shifts with her every breath, and Ruby's awareness telescopes down to her own breathing, the sound of her heart beating in her chest, how dry her mouth is, how Penny's hair smells like apricots and a thin sheen of sweat glisten over her shoulders. She swallows, doesn't know why there's a sudden lump in her throat. Waits.

—What were a few illegal acts between friends?

(Somewhere in Beacon, Yang Xiao Long fights a sudden fit of sneezing.)

Penny arches her back at the next touch of the soldering iron, her circuit board crackling as Ruby held it there. She keeps the iron pressed even after the next bit of path is affixed, notes the change in Penny's breathing and the sigh that ekes out past her lips once she pulls the iron away. It’s—the level of work that went into creating Penny is astounding, she thinks, and the tinkerer in her wants to see more, wants to figure out makes her tic. For science.

She lingers again after the next touch. Penny squirms, maybe finally understands something’s up after the silence, rides that feeling, intuits somewhere between taking her lip between her teeth and fighting back a shudder that Ruby knows exactly what she’s doing. And yet—

“We’re almost done,” Ruby says, brow furrowing in concentration, “Just hold tight, P.”

She mutters a quick  _okay,_ breathless.Ruby melts a little more solder and settles her free hand on Penny’s bare shoulder, pushing down. She needs a better view; the depression is close to the junction of where Penny’s admin board and pseudo-skin meet, tucked at an odd angle. When the idea gets through, Penny leans forward and props herself up on her elbows, balancing them on her thighs. Ruby takes a deep breath—grass, earth, the roots of the cypress tree—and carefully, fighting shaking hands, goes to fill the missing circuit.

It’s the longest she works in one sitting.

Penny trembles, her shoulder rises and falls beneath Ruby’s hand. “Almost—” Ruby whispers through grit teeth, knuckles white around the iron. She shouldn’t have messed around earlier, should’ve been less curious. If Penny freaks now, they’re liable to melt hot solder everywhere but where it needs to go. 

“Ruby, p-please—hurry!” she says, the words a quiet rush, and Ruby obliges, ups the pace, doesn't stop, clenches her jaw tight and ignores the cramp throbbing in her hand as it gets that much worse.

One last, quick press finishes the job. Ruby pulls back all at once, thanks every god she's heard of nothing went wrong as her butt hits the blanket. It'll take a couple seconds for the solder to cool, but they're done.  _Done_. She flicks off the iron and lets out a breath she didn't know she was holding. Exhaustion breaks over her in a wave; done, finished, finito. Ruby repeats the words in her head until it occurs to her she should be celebrating. "I guess that's mission accomplished, right?" she asks, leaning back on her hands.

Instead, Penny goes slack everywhere, pitching toward Ruby like a doll with its strings cut. Her eyes go wide. "Penny...?!"

An electric shock of panic races up Ruby's spine, her heart racing. She catches Penny before the redhead lands square between her legs, crosses them beneath her friend's head to give her a place to rest. “Penny, oh gosh I’m so—” she stops herself at seeing Penny give her a lopsided grin up from her lap, her eyes half-lid. Content. "Oh."

She lets out a happy sigh and closes her eyes, shakes her head. "Don't scare me like that," she says, "Now everything's ridiculous."

A fair hundred rose petals cover the immediate area. Ruby tries not to laugh—the spike in adrenaline activated her Semblance, though the petals vanish as quick as they fall.

Soft hands find her face. “Ruby, that...that was...” Penny opens her eyes a little wider, trails off and just lays there, her chest rising and falling with every breath. "That was simply..." her eyelashes flutter, close before she forces them open. She sighs, content. “That was fan _tas_ tic!" she eventually exclaims, dropping her hands from Ruby's face with a giggle."I should have propositioned you for this  _weeks_  ago!”

“Phrasing,” Ruby quips, chuckles at the quizzical look it gets. "Never mind, P—just glad I could help."

They stay beneath the cypress tree until the diagnostic finishes. Stay a little longer, after. When they do decide to pack up and leave, the sun is high above their heads and most of the quad has filtered off for lunch. Ruby takes care of their tools, cleans and dries them while Penny gathers up their blanket. As she folds it up, Ruby watches her work. Wonders and thinks.  _Thinks_. But how the breeze jostles Penny’s hair, makes her reach up and tuck wild strands behind an ear while she admires the lake, is very distracting.

“Hey, Penny—” she starts to ask, stops when her stomach growls, loud and obnoxious. _  
_

Penny faces her regardless, tilts her head to the side with a smile. "Ruby, I enjoyed today very much!” she exclaims, “Would you be willing to continue meeting like this?”

She answers so fast Penny can't keep up, ends up repeating herself twice before it sticks.

"Oh, how out _stand_ ing!" Penny answers—and yeah, Ruby thinks, hands stuffed in her pockets on the way back so they won't vibrate as hard.

She kind of really is.

 

 

 

\- fin.

 

**Author's Note:**

>  **Edit** : [Now with fanart](http://jen-iii.tumblr.com/post/121543401741/i-did-a-sorta-cover-thing-for-afriendtosells) courtesy of the lovely [jen-iii](http://jen-iii.tumblr.com/)! Please show the artist some love, as well!


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